STATEMENT ABOUT THE WORK

Risba, who has transcended a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis and lived through experiences of sexual abuse and artistic boycotting, uses their naked body to create testimonies that outline and dismantle the narratives of sexual violence, discrimination, and oppression faced by women, queer, non-normative, and crip bodies.

By dignifiedly revealing and marking their secret, sacred organs with menstrual blood—a substance of special importance in Risba’s journey of holistic self-healing—the artist creates a situation of mirroring in which audiences can witness and recognize their own vulnerability, innate purity and basic goodness, alongside their capacity for (self-)care and their responsibility to one another and the environment.

This act of inscription challenges Western Christian traditions of original sin, female subjugation, and psychological self-hatred, fostering a return to Eastern concepts of loving-kindness, divine embodiment, and enlightened societies. Through a performative casting process with two of Earth’s essential life-giving nectars, the artist celebrates the inseparability of emptiness and compassion.

The artwork builds on Risba’s recent artistic research on the similarities between human (menstrual) blood and chlorophyll. This research, commissioned by Schmiede Hallein Akademie in 2023, will be published in the forthcoming YslandBook: Blood. (Source: Jatun Risba)